


One Known Truth

by FictionPenned



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26775901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: The dimensions of the space are incomprehensible. The room feels at once to be full of other people and entirely devoid of life, at once bright and dark, and once enormous and claustrophobic. Her captors are equally enigmatic. If you asked Scully to describe the voices or faces of any of the people who float in and out of her vision during this time, she would be unable to do so. Sometimes, they seem no different from the people that occupy the many F.B.I. offices across the country — well-groomed and stoic, with brows that bear the characteristic lines worn only by people who have stared into the face of death and survived. But very occasionally, they blur and morph and change into something entirely other.Written for Whumptober 2020 Day 2 - Kidnapped
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	One Known Truth

Abduction is a common word in the records that constitute the x-files. For decades, people have run to their families and neighbors in the middle of the night, raving about being kidnapped by aliens. Almost always, such ravings are either discounted out of hand or offered some sort of logical explanation. The human mind has long been known to compensate for failures in both its memory and its many sensory inputs — filling in gaps and drawing unusual assumptions. Most of the time, this science provides context where it would not otherwise exist. In Dana Scully’s case, however, this science seems to obfuscate the truth.

Her current circumstances make no logical sense.

The dimensions of the space in which she is being held are incomprehensible. The room feels at once to be full of other people and entirely devoid of life, at once bright and dark, and once enormous and claustrophobic. Her captors are equally enigmatic. If you asked Scully to describe the voices or faces of any of the people who float in and out of her vision during this time, she would be unable to do so. Sometimes, they seem no different from the people that occupy the many F.B.I. offices across the country — well-groomed and stoic, with brows that bear the characteristic lines worn only by people who have stared into the face of death and survived. But very occasionally, they blur and morph and change into something entirely _other_.

She should, perhaps, be at her most afraid during the moments when it seems as if she is face to face with horrifying proof of the unknown, but for better or for worse, she never is. Like so many abductees who came before her, her brain works tirelessly to fill in the gaps and provide a meaningful explanation for her trauma, but unlike so many of the abductees that line Mulder’s files, Scully’s mind trends in the opposite direction. She smooths over the confusion with stubborn, unforgiving rationality.

She is in the hands of men, she decides. Evil is and always has been a matter of the mundane — comprised of horrible acts committed by parents and passing strangers and the neighbors that you see once a year during dull, sun-bleached block parties. Her brain sees aliens only because it is primed to see aliens. After all, she has spent over a year committing herself to the x-files and Mulder’s crusade for the truth. Absurd ideas have come to define Dana Scully’s day-to-day existence — lurking in every shadow, spinning off of the lips of the many residents in small, Middle American towns, and lining the typed text of the reports that she dutifully hands off to her superiors at the end of every investigation. So far as she sees it, all it took to blur the lines between science fiction and reality was at the right combination of sedation and solitude.

Scully clings to the idea with no small amount of desperation — designating it as the only known truth that can exist within this horrible, tortuous space.

A cocktail of drugs keeps her suspended in a state of vague disassociation. Scully never quite manages to reach true numbness, never quite manages to forget the pain and fear that picks at her skin and buzzes in her skull, never quite manages to stop caring. Part of her wishes that she could just surrender to apathy — float away and leave all of this discomfort behind her — but the rest of her continues to hold fast to that single, ineffable truth. It is the only thing left to anchor her to life and sanity and —

 _Mulder_.

Scully does not have any memories of rescue and she certainly could not have found an opportunity to escape, so when Mulder takes her hand and speaks her name, she briefly assumes that the entire affair must have been a particularly vivid nightmare, cut short before her brain figured out how to end the narrative. However, the expression on Mulder’s face as she cracks open her eyes, the familiar smell of medical-grade disinfectant that hits her nose, and the fatigued ache that presses her deep into the mattress of a hospital bed are all things that speak to the reality of the experience.

She was gone, and now she’s back again.

She reaches into her memories, desperately trying to sort through them, to remember key details before they are lost to her forever, but it’s like trying to hold a cobweb in her hands. Memories rip and tear and fall apart beneath her touch before she has even half a chance of preserving them properly.

For the first time, Scully truly understands the anecdotes that line their files — the gaps in time, the muddled facts, the frustrating ‘ _I can’t recalls’_. She wishes she didn’t, but she does, and she has the distinct feeling of having just passed a point of no return.

Scully sweeps a tongue across her chapped lips and says for the first time in weeks, “Hey, Mulder.”

The words are strangled and weary and on the verge of breaking, but her partner still unleashes a bright, relieved, and almost boyish grin in reply.

“Thought I lost you for a minute there.”

“I’m not entirely convinced that you didn’t,” Scully says, allowing herself a tiny smile of her own.

But as she turns her eyes back towards the ceiling and allows the smile to fade away, she cannot help but wonder if things that have been stolen still count as being lost.


End file.
